Ripleys

On a recent visit to London visiting my son and having Little Miss with us, we needed to find an attraction which would appeal for all.
WHY "BELIEVE IT OR NOT?"

Robert Ripley who was a cartoonist, explorer and collector of the odd and the unusual visited more than 200 countries. He collected odd and unusual items from all over the world and is responsible for the phrase "believe it or not". The attraction
Ripleys is at Picaddily Circus close to the tube station and is in a large imposing building with a great big sign on the roof so its hard to miss. Outside the building is a life size model of the tallest man so a suggestion of things to come and plenty of photograph opportunities! Once inside there is the desk where visitors pay and still more odd exhibits including a rather unpleasant model of The Lizardman with his forked tongue, Teflon implants and pointed teeth.

RIPLEYS...

The exhibits are on I believe three floors and visitors take the lift between floors. The journey on the lift certainly gave us a taste of things to come with a voice over telling us what was in store for us.

The first room we came to consisted of several odd and quite bizarre animals such as a cow with two heads and a six legged bison, set out as though they are in pen together There were also unusual cars and a large chair which plenty of people were climbing onto for a photo opportunity. The room was nice and open and there weren't too many people so it was easy to get a good look around.
It's quite easy to get round the attraction and wherever we went there were artefacts to interest and appal us in equal measure. The Extreme people exhibition had a lot of pictures as well as some interactive activities. One of the ones which had a lot of people having a go was the weigh in. This had a model of the heaviest man ever and scales; whole families could get on the scales and still not weigh as much as he did. There were strange pictures including the Crucifixion of Christ on Toast and pictures made of driftwood. It made me wonder how people got the ideas from!

The Shrunken Heads exhibition was quite gruesome and consisted of lots of information about how the heads are shrunk and examples of the actual heads. Another horrific area was the Torture area, which was all dark and from entering it we could see the graveyard. In here there were some awful methods of torture but nothing gave us more of a shock than the electric chair- pull down a lever and the thing goes forward really quickly with an explosion of smoke- really not expected.
We had paid for the mirror maze which looked really easy but there were moments when we were inside that I thought we would never find our way out!


ADMISSION PRICES...
Not the cheapest attraction I have ever been to although the price includes entry to the mirror maze and if you book online there is a 20% discount. There are also several people wandering around the area giving out discount vouchers.

Adult £25.95
Senior/Student £23.95
Child [4 - 15] £19.95

OPENING TIMES...

10.00 - midnight (last entry 22.30)
It is open 7 days a week

CONTACT

Address: The London Pavilion, 1 Piccadilly Circus, London W1J 0DA
Telephone: + 44 (0)20 3238 0022
Website: http://www.ripleyslondon.com/

VERDICT...

I have just touched briefly on some of the exhibits, but the whole place is really interesting and gave us lots to talk about. There are lots of wax figures, and authentic tribal artefacts as well as models and pictures. Even the curtains on the round windows are bizarre- they look like curtains but are part of the wall.
For anyone in the area and wanting a different kind of museum/attraction I would recommend this place.

Thanks for reading
Daniela xx